Wasting



Sakina did not know her age; she never went to a school. She had been married for three years. Her husband was labourer. They lived in a joint family with her in-laws in a house which had electricity but no gas connection. They cooked on fuel wood collected from nearby fields adjacent to a canal. The tap water, according to Sakina was good for drinking because of the proximity of the canal. They did not boil it before use. The nearest government health facility was about 4 to 5 kilometres from their home. Sakina described her health and her husband’s health as ‘not the best’. Her husband had hurt his back at work and that was something that bothered him a lot.

Their son, Sanval was just about a year old. He was delivered at a hospital through caesarean section. Sakina could start breastfeeding him only on the 8th day of his birth. Before that he was given packaged milk (‘milk pack’) because, ‘I was told at the hospital where I went for the operation to feed him milk pack’. Sanval was also not weighed at the time of birth but Sakina believes that his weakness was ‘visibly noticeable’ at that time too. When his condition didn’t improve, they took him to various doctors where they found out about his Sokra ‘only through ultrasound’. Medicine prescribed by doctors and 'even blood transfusion' did not change the condition of the child who suffered from wasting. RUTF (Ready to Use Therapeutic Food) provided by the LHWs also did not help as the child ‘couldn’t digest it’. Sakina and her husband took their child to a pir (spiritual healer) because ‘a lot of people go to pirs for many illnesses’, but it didn’t result in improvement in Sanval’s health.

Sakina and her husband are continuing their son’s medical and spiritual treatment simultaneously. She reports that the RUTF or other solid food such as porridge (dalya) or cereal (cerelac) upsets his stomach. Therefore, she avoids solid food; ‘I mostly just give him water and milk, but sometimes I also give him rusk with tea’. But diarrhoea might be caused by contaminated water? Sakina wonders if that was possible at all because she had made a habit of using ‘fresh tap water’.

Children in Punjab (< 5 yrs):
34% are underweight 
34% are stunted 
18% are wasted
(MICS 2014)

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